Don't like the sound of Wnr Br0$ shutting their blog down. Surely they'd have bigger fish to fry.. ah well let's hope so.

Meanwhile there's a brilliant How To Buy The Smiths article right at the back of MOJO December issue which just came out in the uk. It goes for Hatful.. as the best album, as voted for by writers and members of MOJO forum. I concur!

i can see just from the first blog post that i'll be learning a few things here. and there was me fancying myself as some kind of Smiths expert! what was Brixton Ace i wonder? never heard of it before.

Not really -- I've encountered enough people over time who are very explicitly all about Marr and the music above all else, and who really don't bother with Morrissey solo much. They're a smaller and much less visible group of Smiths fans than the expected norm, but they're there.

morrissey as a person does my head in to be honest. that night he flounced offstage last year in Liverpool after 1 song was the last straw for me. The Smiths are still my fave band of the 80s by some distance but his solo career could make a good 6 track mini album at best imho.

Morrissey has evolved an not always in ways I have found satisfying as I, too, have evolved. He has a couple of singles I like but The Smiths was the great musical love of my adolescence and that doesn't mean I have to keep following now. Ned, I love Marr but the last time he was in town fronting his forgettable band, I actually yawned and ended up leaving.

one time an old band i was in did a bunch of smiths covers for a cover band contest.

was really interesting learning their material....gave us such an appreciation for them as musicians...marr's parts are incredibly odd and difficult to learn, such a personal style of playing guitar (and frankly or guitarist had to just get it "close" esp on the more picky stuff)...

another thing that really sticks out when you sit down and learn the parts is how amazing rourke and joyce are as a rhythm section....rourke's bass lines are so melodic and invenetive, even if he's not really "showy" in a classic musicianly way....

another weird thing, is that sometimes the parts weren't the "right" number of measures...like in general in rock it will be okay well four bars of this, then sixteen bars of that, then eight bars of the chorus, etc etc...def EVEN numbers

sometimes with the smiths it would be well four bars, then eight, then FIVE, then twelve or something...it was usually apparent that they were conforming the songwriting to whatever lyrics morrissey had and not vice versa...